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Mask of Infinity (Story)
Mask of Infinity--Book 1 of the Order of Infinity Saga Mask of Infinity (Story) is going under major revisions and is being rewritten. You can still view the original unfinished draft Here. Growing Smaller “Grik, we need to keep moving. Some wild creature is bound to find us on this planet if we don’t continue to walk,” Toa Tanuva uttered to his companion, Toa Grik, a Toa of Air. Tanuva packed his remaining water canisters into a burlap sack. “Gather up the last of your food supplies.” Tanuva rose to his feet and dusted the sand off of his glistening armor. He peered off into the desert sunset of Hura Magna. Grik stood up and shoved a handful of food canisters into Tanuva’s bag. “The sun is setting rapidly,” Grik observed. “Don’t you think we should rest here until morning?” Tanuva didn’t answer, still staring off towards the faraway horizon. Finally, he answered, “I guess we could. But I don’t want to. We need to sleep in a bigger cave than that,” he pointed out, pointing at the small hideout that Grik and Tanuva were in just minutes earlier. “I’m going to start walking,” Tanuva decided, “and I recommend you follow me.” Not even bothering to look back, Tanuva marched forward, the burlap sack swinging from his arm. With a hesitant sigh, Grik followed. “Where are we going?” Grik queried. “Wherever nature decides,” Tanuva answered, engulfed in the quiet trance of the desert. Grik shook his head. Tanuva’s broad answer didn’t seem to help at all. Walking without a purpose, the two Toa trudged on through the ever-expanding desert. The setting evening sun cast a warm, orange glow upon the sand, causing it to sparkle with light. Small clouds of dust propelled into the air with each footstep. As night grew further imminent, the two silhouettes of Toa slipped farther into the heart of the desert. The desert is no place to be during the night. Tanuva slowly, carefully paced forward, making certain that he wasn’t going to trip on anything. He took cautious steps as they progressed forth, Grik still following close behind. The sun was completely gone now, and only a ghostly glow beaming from the moon faintly illuminated the land with a pasty light. This still didn’t provide an accurate view of where anything was. The burlap sack swung from his shoulder, the water swooshing around inside their canisters. All of a sudden, Tanuva tripped over a small boulder and lost his balance and flew backwards, slamming into Grik’s chest. They both collapsed and faceplanted, eating a handful of gritty sand. “AH! What was that for?!” Grik grumbled, wiping sand particles out of his eyes. “Don’t get mad at me! I tripped!” Tanuva fought back. Tanuva stood up and wiped a mound of sand out of his mouth. When the unpleasant taste was eliminated from Tanuva’s tongue, he held his hand out towards Grik and waited for him to take it. He lifted the Toa of Air up. “Yuck!” grunted, unhappy with the sickening taste of ground on his taste buds. He snatched the sack from Tanuva and pulled out a water canister. He unlatched the top and took many large swigs, started to gargle it, and spat it onto a rock. After fastening the top back on the canister, he held it out and waited for Tanuva to take it. “Don’t drink so much,” ordered Tanuva as he slipped the canister back into the sack. “We need to conserve our water.” All of a sudden, a mighty hissing sound echoed far off in the distance, a fierce anger in its voice. Grik froze, blood running cold. “What was that?” A remote shadow appeared. It started making its way closer. The Toa partners heard another hiss, much louder than before. Grik unsheathed a long blade and grasped it close to him. Nevertheless, the sound continued to become more and more audible. To protect himself, Tanuva pulled out a small gold sword and held it tight, searching the area for the cause of the vicious noises. The shadow moved closer and closer, but all of a sudden it leaped into the air and performed a cannonball into the ground, disappearing beneath the ocean of sand. “It’s gone,” Grik sighed with content relief. Then, as if on cue, a burst of sand exploded and flew in all directions. A tall, bulky creature with glossy green armor came into view. “It’s a Rahkshi of Growth!!!” Grik cried in surprise. Tanuva started charging toward it, slashing his blades back and forth in hope to strike the enormous creature. “Come here so I can finish you already!!” he cried as he swung at the Rahkshi’s arm. Meanwhile, Grik stabbed at the Rahkshi, aiming for his chest, but all he managed to do was merely poke it in the leg a few times, doing almost nothing. The Rahkshi pulled back his staff of growth, then thrust it into Tanuva’s chest. It emitted a high-voltage shock that coursed through Tanuva. “AAHHH!!!!” he shrieked in distress. The Rahkshi of Growth pulled the staff out of Tanuva’s chest, and all of a sudden a bright flash lit the night. Grik spun around and saw Tanuva glowing, and—at the same time—shrinking. He grew smaller, and smaller, and smaller, until finally he was only a few inches tall. “What just happened?” he said in a miniature, squeaky voice. The words came out so strange that Grik couldn’t help but laugh. He tried to hold it back, but it exploded out of him, and he fell to the ground having a laughing spasm. “Stop laughing, idiot!” Tanuva ordered in his chipmunk voice. “This isn’t funny!” “ARE YOU KIDDING?! IT’S HILLARIOUS!!” Grik was still on the ground, rolling around like crazy. Since no one was going to help Tanuva, he marched over to Grik to force him to. He slapped him on the face, which didn’t seem to help at all. He stomped on his head over and over, but he was too miniscule of a size to stop Grik’s giggling fit. Tanuva jumped off, seeing as his anger wasn’t doing a single thing. Clearly annoyed with the two Toa, the Rahkshi opened its mouth and let out a half hiss-half roar, globs of spit flinging out of its mouth in the process. The saliva splattered upon Grik, coating his green armor and kanohi. “Egh!!!” he cried in disgust as he flicked blobs of spit off of his face. He stood up and stopped laughing. “What was that for?” Grik jumped high and flipped backwards in midair over the Rahkshi’s head. He latched onto its back, the creature squirming and shaking in efforts to make Grik fall off. But it was no use. The Rahkshi reached for Grik with its arms, but still nothing worked. Grik raised his aeroblade. “GOODBYE, PEST!!” he screamed as he whacked it in the back of the neck. Metal shards were propelled through the air. The Rahkshi faltered and stumbled, losing his balance from the deadly wound in the top of his head, killing the kraata controlling it. Grik pushed himself backwards off the Rahkshi and landed in the sand. The Rahkshi tipped over and landed in the sand, sending a plume of dust into the air. Grik stood proudly, staring at the dead Rahkshi. His proud moment was interrupted by the still shrunken Tanuva, who was standing on the sand. “AHEM! Would you please help me now?” Reverse Grik held his hand out at Tanuva and told him to hop on. Tanuva scurried towards him with his miniature legs. He sat on Grik's and put his head down, hiding his humiliation. "How the heck am I supposed to turn you back to normal?" Grik asked, staring at Tanuva, on the verge of laughing at him again. "Do you have any ideas?" Tanuva pondered his situation. He peered at the dead Rahkshi and spotted its silver staff, glinting in the moonlight. Maybe, just maybe he could reverse the affects of the shrinking with that thing... "Grik, how about you use that staff to turn me back to normal size?" Tanuva wondered, speaking in his high-pitched squeaky ton of voice. He pointed at the object. "How in the name of Mata Nui am I supposed to know how to use a Rahkshi staff?!" was Grik's response. "Hey, it's just an idea. And it might be our only option." "Actually," Grik started, "the other option would be to stay that size for the rest of your life." Tanuva's eyes widened in alarm. "You're not serious." Grik couldn't help but grin mischievously. "How do you know that I'm not really going to do anything?" If Tanuva was bigger, he would've taken the Rahkshi's head and shoved it up his...well, you get the idea. "Grik!! I'm not kidding! Just trust me on this one!! I don't want to look and sound like a stupid chipmunk on drugs for the rest of my life!!" At this, Grik chuckled. "Oh, alright," he said. "I suppose I can try something." Grik shuffled over to the Rahkshi's corpse and picked up the staff aligned next to it. "Hmm, let's see here," he murmured to himself as he observed the weapon. Nothing too special about it. Then he flipped it over. On the other side was a complex pattern of icons. "Whoa, looks complicated," Grik said. Tanuva looked at it and spoke to Grik, not taking his eyes off the staff, arms crossed. "Well, you're going to have to find some way to work that thing." Grik carefully examined the tool, taking notice of any special patterns on a button. He found a glowing blue one that was slightly larger than the rest, except for a glowing red one the same size. Grik's attention was immediately pulled towards the red icon. Who wouldn't want to press the big, shiny red button? "Grik! Don't push the red one!" Tanuva squeaked. "Why?" Grik asked, somewhat disappointed that Tanuva had noticed. "Just press the blue one. I have a bad feeling about the red one," he said. After finally agreeing with him, Grik set Tanuva down on the sand and pointed the staff at him. He rested his finger upon the blue button and pressed it. A flash of light streaked from the staff and shot Tanuva in the chest. Small electric bolts of lightning rippled across the surface of his body, and he began to get larger and larger. In a matter of moments, Tanuva had returned to his original size. "Thank you," he said, gleeful that his normal-pitched voice had returned. "Yeah, sure," Grik said. In truth, Grik was slightly upset that he didn't get to push the red button or hear Tanuva's strange tiny voice. "Wow, what a night!" Tanuva exclaimed as he picked up the burlap sack that fell off of him when he shrunk. "Now we really need to find someplace to rest." A Pile of Empty Canisters It was days after the attack of the Rahkshi. The duo had been walking for who knows how long, surviving off of the last scraps of food and water left in their sack. The hazy trance of the barren desert was finally starting to play tricks on their exhausted minds, and the unmerciful grasp of the searing heat baked everything in its path. Grik coughed hard and dry, no moisture in his mouth. "Is there any more water in that, COUGH!, stupid sack?" he asked, pleading for a drink. "No! It isn't yours!! You drank half of my canister yesterday!" Tanuva snapped, clutching the bag close to his chest. Grik stared at Tanuva, wild daze in both of their eyes. Grik squinted at the Toa in front of him as if he was peering off into the distance, all the while breathing heavily, hunched over. Menacingly, Grik growled, "give me the sack." Tanuva squeezed the bag harder, wrapping his arms around it and feeling the contents. "No," he replied sternly. "I said, GIVE ME THE SACK!!" Grik pulled his blade from its strap, the metal blade glinting in the midst of the beaming desert sun, and pointed it at Tanuva's neck. "I'm not afraid to use this thing!!" He slashed it back and forth, hearing it whoosh through the hot air. Grik briefly glanced at Tanuva's sack, then made eye contact with him. He raised his blade and slashed the edge of the sack, slicing a large hole in the fabric. Twelve silver canisters fell out and landed upon the sand, sizzling with the newfound heat of the ground. Grik dropped his blade and gasped in awe, mouth gaping open. He squeaked out a dimented laugh and leaped at the pile of containers, unscrewing them all and dumping the contents into his dry mouth. Tanuva, with little energy to accomplish anything, simply stared and fell to his knees. Grik arose and wiped his mouth after letting out a putrid belch. He kicked a canister aside. "How could you, you sack of Rahi sludge??!! Don't you realize that you just ate the last of our food?! We needed that! How else do you suppose we survive out in this wasteland?" Tanuva wailed. He crawled to the pile of empty canisters, staring at the last tiny scraps of crumbs left in the base of them. Then, almost uncalled for, Tanuva started sobbing. He fell to his chest and buried his face in the sand. He stopped and brushed particles of sand off his face. He breathed heavily, still with a trace of weeping in his voice, and he looked longingly at a pile of empty canisters. Refuge "Come on, everyone! Let's keep walking as fast as we can! It's too hot out here, and we all need shelter!" a Matoran named Derak yelled in effort to lift the rest of the traveling group's energy. But no one seemed to have much motivation left in them. Chapter unfinished Trivia *Written by *The story went under some pretty major revisions, but the old draft can still be viewed. *This story originally had Glatorian and Agori, but was later changed to Toa and Matoran. *Biogecko is allowing me to use Leviathos in this story. *Kental and the Rahkshi of Growth are being featured in this story for winning the Legend of Zizox MOC Contest.